Hurricane causes havoc in Cuba: Evacuation of New Orleans ordered
No deaths had been reported as of Sunday afternoon, however, a full day after the storm packing 145 mph winds crossed Cuba.
Gustav had already killed at least 86 people in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
“High tension towers were twisted and down, roofs blown off entire towns, schools destroyed and in Palacios even the baseball stadium’s walls were gone,” Reuters TV cameraman Heriberto Rodriguez said.
Residents could be seen crying over the foundations of their homes or wandering around aimlessly.
There was little information from the Isle of Youth, 40 miles off the southwestern coast, which was raked by Gustav before it made landfall in the southern coast town of Palacios.
State television showed pictures of destroyed homes, submerged factories and boats lifted from their moorings and left in city streets.
The storms 150 mph winds scattered trees and telephone poles like toothpicks. The 800,000 residents of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth remained without power on Sunday, as did many of the more than three million residents of adjoining Havana province and the capital.
Where Gustav’s eye hit nothing stood. Up to 100 miles to the east in Matanza, wind gusts downed trees and damaged buildings, telephone and electricity lines.
The city of Havana’s streets were littered with branches, shrubs, trees and light poles.Wind and rains damaged banana plantations and other crops in Havana province, the capital’s bread basket.
Damage to recently harvested tobacco in Pinar del Rio, the heart of Cuba’s prized industry, was still being tallied.
The Cuban weather service said one of its stations measured a gust of 204 mph, the highest ever recorded.
In the United States, more than a million people fled Louisiana as killer Hurricane Gustav roared toward New Orleans, a fragile US coastal city still deeply scarred by the devastating 2005 Katrina storm.
Highways out of New Orleans have been crammed since before dawn as people scurried to escape a monster storm that could slam the Louisiana coast as early as midday Monday.
The state’s governor, Bobby Jindal, said that more than a million people were on the move because of Gustav’s destructive potential.
Officials are carefully watching whether Gustav strengthens as it crosses the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, desperate to avoid a replay of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe, ordered the city emptied in the face of what he called “the storm of the century” and roads quickly filled with fleeing residents.
Louisiana director of homeland security Jerry Snead says 10,000 people were bussed or taken by train out of New Orleans parish by Saturday night and that he expects the figure to reach 30,000 by the time they cut off “assisted evacuation” late Sunday.
Gun shops saw a run of customers through the weekend, indicating many were arming themselves for the lawlessness that marked Katrina’s aftermath.
Local authorities promise intense police and National Guard presence and vow to arrest anyone caught roaming evacuated areas.—Agencies